Random notes

I have completed reading Chitrakar the autobiography of Benodebehari Mukherjee(1904-1980) translated and introduced by K.G.Subramanyam.

The book has four chapters: The Artist(Chitrakar),Master of the Household(Kattamashai),The Creator(Kritikar) and Art Quest(Silpa Jignasa)

The first chapter is a very interesting narration of the artist’s life experiences from early childhood till he became totally blind at the age of 53.The second piece “The master of the House hold” describes Benodbehari’s passage from light to darkness.This is done mixing factual and fictional elements.This was the piece that Benodbehari wrote first.The next chapter “The creator”(Kritikar) is a parable which can be interpreted variedly though for sure it could be said that Benodbehari’s concepts of art and its strange relationship with reality is a prime theme of the parable.The last chapter is in a way an extension or elaboration of this chapter.Here the artist discusses various issues related to the meaning and function of art.The key elements that differenciate Indian,Chinese and Japanese art are clearly pointed out.

The book is made more worthy and meaningful by the foreward ,introduction and appendix written by K.G.Subramaniam.The Appendix is concluded thus: “But he was in his last years terribly nostalgic about Santinikethan.He used to often say that when he closed his eyes,the image he saw of himself was against its old austere landscape with its forlorn palm trees.He often saw himself as a solitary palm in the middle of that landscape.”

Simplicity in narration and directness in the presentation of ideas are the most striking qualities of this autobiography.See the opening sentence of the Preface :The closer a man approaches his end the more he recalls his past; in other words he looks for himself in the world of memory.The first chapter begins with a still more simple statement :I see my childhood in the grey light of my memory.

The theoretical standpoints of Benodebehari on art presented in the book cannot claim great philosophical gravity or not even originality.But the sincerity and serenity that one can feel in each and every word give his thoughts a rare beauty and warmth.

Binodebehari has expressed his attitude towards realism and abstraction in the following statement without giving any space for doubt : An artist builds a pedastal for his image of man somewhere between an earth-to-heaven ascent and a heaven-to-earth descent.This may stand close to earth’s reality or heavens above; in one case it is built of factual ingredients and in the other,of abstract ones.Unless it has found a place between the ascent and descent no work will be fully fructuous.(p.148).

The publisher of Chitrakar is Seagull Books,Calcutta.(2006)